Monday, November 8, 2010
The Redistricting Game: A way to keep a broken system from being 'fixed?'
Even though it comes at the end of our unit on Congress, here is a way for you to continue your education, win or lose, on the world of Congressional gerrymandering. Check it out and if any of you have any good ideas on how I might implement this in class, let me know.
The Redistricting Game is designed to educate, engage, and empower citizens around the issue of political redistricting. Currently, the political system in most states allows the state legislators themselves to draw the lines. This system is subject to a wide range of abuses and manipulations that encourage incumbents to draw districts which protect their seats rather than risk an open contest.
By exploring how the system works, as well as how open it is to abuse, The Redistricting Game allows players to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system. The game provides a basic introduction to the redistricting system, allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives - including a playable version of the Tanner Reform bill to demonstrate the ways that the system might be made more consistent with tenets of good governance. Beyond playing the game, the web site for The Redistricting Game provides a wealth of information about redistricting in every state as well as providing hands-on opportunities for civic engagement and political action.
The Redistricting Game was created at the USC Game Innovation Lab - part of the USC School of Cinematic Arts', Interactive Media Division.
Play the game here: http://www.redistrictinggame.org/index.php
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2 comments:
This was a really interesting game that shows the fact that gerrymandering can win elections before the people get to choose. In the game the party controlling the state legislature gerrymandered congressional districts to support their incumbents and taking districts from the opposing party. The makers of the game suggest that the solution would be a bipartisan committee that would suggest a solution to the state legislature. However not only would the party controlling the state legislature still push for a system that benefits them, both parties in the committee would work together only to freeze out third parties and challengers to the already safe incumbents. The only real solution to gerrymandering would be voters looking at all the candidates and learning the issues rather than following their respective parties blindly.
This game was really sweet in all seriousness. It made it easy to understand the other ways gerrymandering can be used to pack districts by party or by race, to favor incumbents or to favor new candidates. I understood the concept on a basic level just fine before, but this is the type of thing that helps it stick in my mind, and I'll definitely be more likely to remember what gerrymandering is come May on the exam. The one thing I thought was really stupid was the last challenge, the reform one. It was totally pointless to try to rig districts to favor the incumbents without having any demographic info. But otherwise, really awesome game, definitely show this to your future classes.
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